*This post contains Amazon affiliate links. If you click through and make a purchase, I will receive a small compensation at no extra cost to you. This helps keep my blog ad-free.
When my friend, Laurie Petrisin, announced the release of her children’s book, Acorn and Button, I was so happy for her and couldn’t wait to read it.
A little backstory: Laurie taught my two kids art all the years I homeschooled them. I didn’t have money for private art lessons, so Laurie let me barter with her. I’d bring her gluten free treats, hummus, soup, and other homemade goodies, and she’d give them a generously long art lesson. I’m pretty sure we got the better end of the deal. My kids loved her and learned drawing, color, composition, watercolor, oil painting, and so much more.
This is a picture book about two very different personalities. Acorn is sweet, sensitive, creative, and carefree, while Button is more fastidious, uptight, proper, and careful. Think Frog and Toad, but different. No “I Can Read” stilted wording, for one. And much more colorful illustrations.
So Acorn and Button meet in the woods and become fast friends. They immediately begin having adventures together, make discoveries, and learn about life. Within each adventure is a little nugget of wisdom, even though it’s never preachy. This duo learn about bravery, kindness, creativity, the seasons/cycles of nature, helping each other, making the best of not-so-ideal situations, and more.
Illustrations abound on every page: they’re colorful, action-packed, and lively, so they’ll capture the attention of a range of ages. (I’m thinking ages 6–9, although perhaps a little younger or older.)
And while this is a picture book, it’s also a chapter book. Which means you’ll have a whole week of bedtime stories, although you know they’re going to beg for just one more chapter!
Acorn and Button by Laura Petrisin is full of heartwarming, appealing, relatable characters and stories that will hold your child’s attention and yours as well. I highly recommend this adorable picture book!
And congratulations to Laurie, for all the creative work, thought, energy, and love she put into bringing Acorn and Button to life.
What does being kind bring up for you? Is it paying for the meal or coffee or toll of the person behind you? Is it a hug or refraining from saying something sharp or critical to your friend or family member? Is it words of encouragement? Or making a delicious meal for someone who’s having a hard time?
Those examples are the easy side of being kind. There’s a tougher side to kindness as well.
Being kind can be releasing someone who needs you to let them move into the next chapter of their life. It can be ending work at a place of employment because it’s taking too high of an emotional toll. It can be encouraging yourself to go for a walk when you’re stressed or to eat a nutrition-packed lunch instead of fast food so you’ll feel great the rest of the day. It can be saying something that needs to be said, even though you don’t know how it’ll turn out.
One example of the difficult side of kindness from my own life is helping my 24-year-old son pack and get ready to move out West. My mother heart wants him to stay in this area, close to me, so I can see him, spend time with him, feed him, etc. But that wouldn’t be kindness if I pressured him to stay or to heaped guilt on him for deciding to go. It’s natural and healthy for young adults to leave the nest, to spread their wings, and fly off on adventures of their very own. I did my work of raising him, and now it’s time for him to fly.
Similarly, I didn’t hold my daughter back when she left a year and a half ago at age 18. The kind thing was to help her gather together and pack all the household things she’d need for life on her own. To hug her and say how proud I was of her for being so brave to go after her dreams. And I was there to wave her off down the road. After she left, I had two weeks where I was so exhausted I could hardly leave my bed. When I went to the grocery store or anywhere in our small college town, it felt empty. I was bereft and grieving. And it was ok. I slowly adjusted to it and eventually it became less painful. Still hard, but less intensely so.
I think I will have a period of grieving after my son goes as well, and that’s ok. As we know, the only constant in life is change. Everything is always and ever changing. And back to kindness, I will do the soft, gentle kind things for myself. And I will also encourage myself not to wallow in sadness, but to be grateful for all the years I had with both of my kids and for what beautiful young people they are. I will encourage myself to still practice meditation and yoga, to still move my body, to still eat the carrot salad, the kale, the right amount of protein for me. To dance, sing, laugh, and create. To drink tea and wine, tend my garden, to read and write and celebrate life in all its complex, bittersweet, glorious moments. I will be kind to myself.
What is the most recent you’ve said you don’t have time for? Is it a daily exercise/movement routine, yoga/meditation/prayer, cooking nutritious food, walking outside four walls, learning a new skill, or re-engaging with a hobby or interest?
I’ve said this phrase to myself or others in the past, but these days I use the phrases “I’m not making time for” or “I choose to spend time doing other things”. Because that’s the truth. All of us have time; what we choose to do with it is up to us. (There are some exceptions with amounts of free time based on privilege, of course, and some of the underprivileged among us actually have little to no free time.)
Take in this info though: the average American spends 3 hours per day watching tv and 3 hours and 43 minutes per day on their phones. You may or may not fit the average, but it’s worth pausing and considering whether you fit this picture. Even if you spend half or a third of this time on your phone or watching tv and you swapped that for doing something you love or you know would benefit you, so much in your life could change!
I’m coming clean: there are three interests that I’ve not consistently made time for in the past few years: painting, music (practicing piano & guitar & songwriting), and writing (journaling, blogging, writing poetry and working on my memoir). In my heart and mind I see myself practicing, writing & creating new music, painting something good enough to hang on my wall, and writing a memoir and poetry collection.
All of those are activities I enjoy and desire to do, yet I don’t make time for them. Why? The first reason that pops into my mind is that it takes a lot of energy and focus to sit down and create and the end result will often not be good enough to turn into a finished product. Key words: end result.
There will be plenty of material that I create that will be just part of the creation and learning process — basically only for the experience itself. And that’s where my capitalistic mindset has me. If it’s not good enough to create a product and sell/sing/play/show it then what was the point? Time is money. I’ve heard this over and over. And all that time will be wasted “playing” rather than working.
In her book, The Gifts of Imperfection, Brené Brown talks about 10 Guideposts to Wholehearted Living. One is that wholehearted people make time to play and another is they make time to sing, dance, and laugh. So playing is something I desire to make time for.
And I do dance in the kitchen out of joy or to let out frustration, but when I think about it, I can find production or habit stacking within dance. I don’t consider dancing a waste of time because my body is getting some movement in and burning calories. Another line of thinking that I’ve absorbed from our culture, so built-in it’s automatically how I think.
That’s why a daily physical yoga practice can be a fight in my mind sometimes too. How can I spend 30–60 minutes on movement that doesn’t result in several hundred calories burned ? Because unless it’s hot yoga or Ashtanga, it’s not a high calorie burner for me anyway. So then I still have to get my workout in.
And I’m not a naturally physically active person. I’m the stuck-in-my-head type who’s always thinking, dreaming, reading, etc. I often only work out because, firstly, I’m concerned about my appearance and only secondly, about my health. (More built-in patriarchal and capitalistic thinking. Ugh.)
And it takes mental and emotional energy to override these patterns of how we see ourselves and the world and do something different. To say:
This is not the only way of living life.
I can choose another perspective.
I can do something just for the experience of doing it. There are other benefits outside of production, work, attempting to make my body fit the cultural ideal, or any other unhealthy pressure that has been foisted on me.
I can choose to tend to my mental health.
I can choose to feed my spiritual hunger.
I can strum a guitar or practice piano simply because I enjoy it.
I can sit with a cup of tea and even a piece of something delicious because I crave rest and delight and space to simply be.
I can laugh and dance, talk to the plants, enjoy living.
I will always make time for work because I love it and because I live in this economic system and it’s necessary. I can also choose to make time for wonder, for awe, for rest, for play, for silliness, for being myself. I can take an honest look at how I spend the hours of my days and choose a kinder, slower, more intentional way of living.
I’m starting a monthly post on what themes came up for me during the previous month. Some bloggers write about “What I Learned in (insert month)” and that can make for fascinating reading. Maybe I’m a bit slower than most bloggers because I usually don’t learn lessons that quickly. It takes me some time for me to have a real “aha” moment and discover some deep truth about myself.
For now, I’m going to share all the random, and perhaps not so random, quotes, words, numbers, symbols, animals, etc., that keep showing themselves to me in a month. Sometimes these will carry over from month to month as in the case of the word “luminous” that has been following me around since January 2022 when I began looking for it once a day. And now I can’t stop seeing it!
Ok, so for April…
Luminous continues to be a familiar. Lightness of being. Illumination. Luminosity. And for May’s Kindred Spirits Literary Society poetry pick, I’m recommending the poetry collection Luminous: Poems and Inquiry for the Soul’s Journey by Laura Weaver. I have more discovery and inner work to be done before I experience a luminous quality within me. And the work can’t be rushed. It will unfold as I am ready.
11:11 was an almost daily sighting. 1 is considered a number of new beginnings. And April was certainly that! It was my first month working for myself after leaving the non-profit I’ve worked at since 2/20. So when I started seeing this number every day, I took it as a sign that I am on the right path. And that is one of its messages: “You’re on the right path,”. It’s a big green light. It signifies creativity, spirituality, and intuition, and manifestation.
Sadhguru says that 11 represents anything in the material world. So knowing that and by seeing this number everywhere, the message seems to be that my business is and will continue to be successful and that I made the right choice to focus my energy on growing my business.
Softness was a word that began to crop up toward the end of April. After a New Moon meditation with Camille Maurine I did have a moment of revelation. I saw how I hadn’t welcomed myself, or provided a soft and safe place for all of myself, for much of my life. It was like each time I came home to myself, I would judge myself in the entryway and decide if I should be put in the “Too Much” or “Not Enough” or “Bad” or “Disappointing” rooms. And I have a choice now to welcome myself in without criticism or a good/bad measuring stick, only with love and acceptance. This will likely take some repeating to sink in and I’m committed to it.
Sparrow at our kitchen windows. For weeks, we’ve had a sparrow pecking at and looking in our kitchen windows, which currently don’t have screens on them. I assume this sparrow is looking at his or her reflection, but it seems as if they’re looking in at us. It struck me last week that perhaps our sparrow symbolized something. Here are a few things sparrows symbolize: In ancient Celtic tradition, sparrows were keepers of ancestral knowledge; they symbolize freedom, hard work, good luck, rebirth, love, spiritual connection, in Chinese culture sparrows are harbingers of spring, and in the Bible, the presence of God and the love and care of God for everything.
“Re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul…” This is from, again, Walt Whitman and can be found in his preface to ‘Leaves of Grass‘. Maybe this is a sign that I am supposed to read ‘Leaves of Grass‘ again? I haven’t read it since I was in high school and I would read it from such a different perspective at this place in my life. Over the course of the month, I heard it in Yoga Teacher Training, in a book on Permaculture, and in another book I’m reading. Maybe it’s time for me to let some stuff go? Things I believed true for most of my life and now am finding I can’t honestly embrace any longer.
Edges came up several times this month. I read about “living in the margins” or “on the edges” in The Enchanted Life: Reclaiming the Magic and Wisdom of the Natural World by Sharon Blackie. And I heard it mentioned in this For the Wild podcast episode with Rosemary Gladstar where she talked about plants that grow up in places humans move to. In the newly turned up ground, on the edges, plants needed for healing such as dandelion, nettle, and plantain will grow. There are actually two newer episodes in this podcast that mention Edges in the title as well. And in this On Being podcast episode, Barbara Brown Taylor talks about living on the edges within the Christian faith. I think there is more to come with edges and margins in the next few months.
Alright, friends. These are the themes that were woven into April. Did any of these resonate with you? Or what themes came up for you? Please share in comments!
If you enjoyed this post, join my Patreon. for $5 per month in the Blog Companion tier, you’ll receive early releases of all the blog posts I share here and with bonus content. I have several other content-filled tiers there as well including a book club, a yoga club, and more!
Life of Kim 